Technical Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to a medical device used in interventional radiology. Specifically, the invention relates to a medical device comprising a hollow needle extending longitudinally from a proximal end to a distal end and wherein the distal end of the hollow needle is formed as a cutting tip.
Background of the Invention
Interventional radiology is a medical sub-specialty of radiology. It is a minimally-invasive image-guided procedure. It has been known to diagnose and treat diseases in almost every organ of the human or animal body. Today many medical conditions, for which conventional surgery would have been used in the past centuries, may be treated by interventional radiology. An interventional radiologist uses, inter alia X-ray devices, computed tomography devices (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) devices, and ultrasonic imaging devices in order to obtain images of a human or animal body. As a consequence of these images, the interventional radiologist is able to navigate an interventional instrument throughout the body to a targeted organ or other part of the human or animal. Flexible catheters are inserted through a small nick in the skin and thus may be guided through a patient's network of arteries or veins. Where tissues of organs are not within reach of a catheter, a biopsy device comprising a rigid hollow needle is used to penetrate from the outside of the patient's body in a direct way to the target. Special instruments may be guided through the hollow needle to extract samples of the tissue, inject fluids, or slide radiofrequency ablation instruments to the target, for example, to destroy cancerous tissue locally in the targeted zone.